Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[LuckyR]

Your description of animal existence within agribusiness is fairly accurate, which is not a surprise because the lay understanding of the topic is pretty good. OTOH, it is my experience that the appreciation of the brutality (by Modern human eyes and sensibilities) of the wild animal experience is frankly quite poor and likely deserves more explanation (compared to the farm animal experience).

Yes, we greatly underestimate suffering in the wild. Humans tend to forget why they trashed ecosystems to build all this - to escape the dangers of the wild.

However, nature is more of a lucky draw than a guaranteed fate like a farm. There's always a small minority of dominant animals that seem to at least enjoy some very good times (reminiscent of human society, only the lives of "human dominants" are much more secure and less fraught than those of other species who must constantly fight for their position). Many of the middling animals can lead reasonable existences, but the dangers are always present.

It also depends on the farm and the attitude of farmers and farm hands. Some are more kind or cruel, like having a good or a bad boss. Being a slave (ie. farm animal) to a "bad boss" (unempathetic farmer) for life would seem a hard fate.

I agree with your agreement. To me it isn't about whether this class of animal has it better than that class, rather a reminder that admittedly accurate data about the negatives of agribusiness need to be tempered by the less sexy information that wild animal life can be even more brutal.

[Sy Borg]

I agree with your agreement. To me it isn't about whether this class of animal has it better than that class, rather a reminder that admittedly accurate data about the negatives of agribusiness need to be tempered by the less sexy information that wild animal life can be even more brutal.

Agribusiness is a guaranteed disaster for all the animals. The wild can provide anything from realisation of dreams to the worst possible brief nightmare - but the true sustained torture is the caging of large mammals and keeping them in their own sh1t. If I had a choice I think I'd take the risk of the wild.

[Gertie]

I'm a vegetarian, I'd be a vegan if I lived up to my own values of not inflicting unnecessary suffering on conscious critters, but I'm too lazy and selfish. So I take my hat off to those that do. The bigger picture of how the world would, or could be, if everybody was vegan and lived by those values is beyond my ken, and I have to live in the here and now, so I just try to do my bit.

Pretty much agree with what people are saying about agribusiness. My auntie and uncle have a small farm, about 130 acres. They ditched the rat race (an IT consultant and a civil engineer so they had a few quid to get them started) to see if they could find a more fulfilling lifestyle. And they made a go of it. It's a rare breed organic sheep farm, with a few chickens and ducks, some cereal crops for hay and a bit of organic veg. They care about the animals' welfare and farm ethically - if you don't count slaughtering the sheep at peak profitability time, many as lambs. Otherwise the animals have a pretty good life, plenty of room to roam, are protected from predators and disease, get good food, shelter when they need it, get to **** once a year. It's a great way to farm, and these are exceptionally lucky farm animals.

But to make a living they have to rely on grants, which they get for supporting rare breeds and being organic. Mainly from the EU, so they're really worried about Britain leaving. They also get involved in funded projects to improve the land, retain bio-diversity habitats and re-forestation. They act as oldskool stewards of the land if you like. It's a brilliant sustainable model for how we ought to think of our relationship with the natural world, but it's all reliant on grants. Otherwise they couldn't compete with the giant farming corporations who treat sentient animals like raw material commodities. I've been to a chicken 'factory farm', a huge warehouse jammed with small cages, the noise, stench and sights were like entering hell.

So yeah it's a choice, cruel exploitation for price and convenience, or pay more for a decent, sustainable farming system.

[LuckyR]

I'm a vegetarian, I'd be a vegan if I lived up to my own values of not inflicting unnecessary suffering on conscious critters, but I'm too lazy and selfish. So I take my hat off to those that do. The bigger picture of how the world would, or could be, if everybody was vegan and lived by those values is beyond my ken, and I have to live in the here and now, so I just try to do my bit.

Pretty much agree with what people are saying about agribusiness. My auntie and uncle have a small farm, about 130 acres. They ditched the rat race (an IT consultant and a civil engineer so they had a few quid to get them started) to see if they could find a more fulfilling lifestyle. And they made a go of it. It's a rare breed organic sheep farm, with a few chickens and ducks, some cereal crops for hay and a bit of organic veg. They care about the animals' welfare and farm ethically - if you don't count slaughtering the sheep at peak profitability time, many as lambs. Otherwise the animals have a pretty good life, plenty of room to roam, are protected from predators and disease, get good food, shelter when they need it, get to **** once a year. It's a great way to farm, and these are exceptionally lucky farm animals.

But to make a living they have to rely on grants, which they get for supporting rare breeds and being organic. Mainly from the EU, so they're really worried about Britain leaving. They also get involved in funded projects to improve the land, retain bio-diversity habitats and re-forestation. They act as oldskool stewards of the land if you like. It's a brilliant sustainable model for how we ought to think of our relationship with the natural world, but it's all reliant on grants. Otherwise they couldn't compete with the giant farming corporations who treat sentient animals like raw material commodities. I've been to a chicken 'factory farm', a huge warehouse jammed with small cages, the noise, stench and sights were like entering hell.

So yeah it's a choice, cruel exploitation for price and convenience, or pay more for a decent, sustainable farming system.

Good point, though the options are not chicken McNuggets for every meal vs veganism. If folks cut their egg/dairy/meat intake 15% and were willing to spend another 10% for those commodities (for free range product), that would be a huge hit to corporate agribusiness and would give the financial push for farmers like your family.

[Gertie]

Yeah. Doesn't seem to be the way things are going tho. We've seen some improvements in some very basic welfare standards here, but I think if it reaches the point where it seriously impacts the profits of powerful corporations it will meet a lot of opposition. There are always arguments to be made for cheap food, competition, bringing employment to an area. And supermarkets effectively drive prices and standards down, and these are people who try to manipulate our buying habits, and have the ear of the government.

[LuckyR]

Yeah. Doesn't seem to be the way things are going tho. We've seen some improvements in some very basic welfare standards here, but I think if it reaches the point where it seriously impacts the profits of powerful corporations it will meet a lot of opposition. There are always arguments to be made for cheap food, competition, bringing employment to an area. And supermarkets effectively drive prices and standards down, and these are people who try to manipulate our buying habits, and have the ear of the government.

Well, around here McDonalds are dropping their profit margin and farmer's markets compete to have representation since the demand is so high.

[Gertie]

Wow that's really encouraging.

It always raises the problem of the fairly well off supporting things like more expensive organic produce and local farmers' markets, while poorer, busier people are left to eat cake - cheap, not ethically sourced and mass produced cake (meat, eggs, milk, etc). I think that brings a natural limit to their growth. Grants and subsidies need to increase substantially to compete in the supermarket mainstream. Or you legislate to force up standards, and poorer people are left poorer still by the raised prices for essentials - a sort of indirect 'tax' which would disproportionately hit the worst off.

Ethics don't come cheap here, and unregulated markets don't operate based on ethics. Ultimately I think it's up to us as a society to make these choices and use government to intervene steadily more actively, using the existing levers of setting more ethical production standards, and subsidies to ethical producers. That requires long-term strategic thinking, not short-term populist policies, hard to win votes that way. Just look at how we stick our fingers in our ears over climate change.

[LuckyR]

Wow that's really encouraging.

It always raises the problem of the fairly well off supporting things like more expensive organic produce and local farmers' markets, while poorer, busier people are left to eat cake - cheap, not ethically sourced and mass produced cake (meat, eggs, milk, etc). I think that brings a natural limit to their growth. Grants and subsidies need to increase substantially to compete in the supermarket mainstream. Or you legislate to force up standards, and poorer people are left poorer still by the raised prices for essentials - a sort of indirect 'tax' which would disproportionately hit the worst off.

Ethics don't come cheap here, and unregulated markets don't operate based on ethics. Ultimately I think it's up to us as a society to make these choices and use government to intervene steadily more actively, using the existing levers of setting more ethical production standards, and subsidies to ethical producers. That requires long-term strategic thinking, not short-term populist policies, hard to win votes that way. Just look at how we stick our fingers in our ears over climate change.

Well you address one side of the coin, namely cost. However much more (especially for the sake of this discussion) important is: value. If you don't value something, then you are not going to spend much on the product or service. OTOH, the opposite is also true. Thus while the "fairly well off" do have more income to spend on better food, I would argue that a more important driver is that those individuals value organic, locally sourced, quality foods higher and thus are willing to spend the money to obtain this perceived to be valuable commodity. There are definitely folks in the bottom quartile of income who eat very poorly but spend more money on tobacco, tickets to sporting events, or hair care products and services than the additional money required to have a significantly better diet. It is more about priorities than straight money.